[WHNB]

Thank you, tvmicrowave, for the heads-up about the new equipment, for maximizing power to the legal limits, and for bringing the long-awaited MeTV, Movies!, and Decades to Connecticut. There is a big improvement in reception compared to Venture Technologies' Jewelry TV on channel 35, which was constantly breaking up in horizontal bars the last time that I checked it.

With an indoor, west-facing Channel Master 4228 antenna, Channel Master 7777 amplifier, and TIVO Roamio OTA Vox tuner/DVR in East Windsor, Connecticut, WHCT's daytime signal strength fluctuates between 62-65-67 every few seconds. That averages 10 1/2 bars out of 16 bars on the TIVO.

The TIVO only receives stations with a minimum signal strength of 62, and no station - not even the full power ones - currently exceeds 67 at my location. When WHCT registers 67, it is equal to WTIC, WCCT, WHPX, and WVIT. The low power stations that measure a 62 and have reception glitches are WRNT and WTXX. Surprisingly, full power WFSB and WEDH also registered 62 when I checked.

The TIVO program guide has no show titles or program descriptions for channel 35, making time-shifting with the DVR not as easy as it could be. Picture quality is good on all of WHCT's channels.

An online site gives the distance by air between Farmington and East Windsor as 17.61 miles. The latitude is 41 degrees 55' 00" N, longitude 72 degrees 33' 28" W.

Thank you for the absence of a constant on-screen logo on the Movies! sub-channel. I like no logos.

 

[TsunamiFPS]

Signal strength for WHCT-LD is on average 51-53% with a Mediasonic Converterbox with a Clearstream 4Max antenna just 13 feet above ground, 15 miles away with 1 edge path at 2 degrees true North, 15 degrees magnetic North which is around 10% more gain compared to what I used to receive when that station only aired Jewelry which has a trash quality while and sometimes went offline. Weird that WEDH from the same position with higher altitude and 5kW more gain for the direction I'm located but breaks up all the time at mostly 43% while it couldn't even beat a low power station while having a full power status.

 

[djblaze]

I can receive WHCT up her in Ware , Mass. I’m close to the Quabbin. WHCT comes in around 30% , had to play around with outdoor antenna to find it. Wtic comes in around 80%. Have no isea if it will improve with leave loss or not. But its nice to be able to watch METV , since no one around carries it.

 

[pauldow]

I'm getting WHCT at 64% strength, 100% quality. I get WVIT at 83% and 100%. I'm 22 miles at 010 degrees from the transmitter.
Nice selection of programming channels.

 

[terminal_man]

I'm no longer seeing any guide info on WHCT. It was working fine the first day but since yesterday no program names or info in the guide just "No info available". Poster "WHNB" above mentioned the same for his TIVO guide. Thought I'd pass it along.

 

[markfromct]

I am getting the guide info on Titantv.com

 

[MrBruce]

If WHCT is a Connecticut based TV station, I can not see why Comcast/Xfinity in the Norwich Connecticut franchise does not carry it. I have to watch METV via WJAR Providence via an outdoor VHF/UHF television antenna pointed towards Providence. I remember MOVIES! used to be carried on WLWC 28 before it went channel sharing with ION channel 69 as ION Life. It would be nice to see WHCT and its subchannels on the Norwich area Xfinity/Comcast cable grid sometime soon. Even though it's a LPTV station there should still be a must carry rule even for LPTV stations if they are in the market area.

 

[KyL416]

WHCT-LD is a LPTV license, so they can't declare must carry status to get on the area cable and satellite systems. MeTV's parent company Weigel is a semi-major broadcaster though with a bunch of full power licenses in other cities, so they can potentially try to include it next time their deal with Comcast is up for renewal.

Providence's MeTV station is affiliated with a full power station, with any local cable carriage being tied to retrans consent deals with WJAR's parent compay Sinclair. Unfortunately in Connecticut the full power stations are already spoken for via deals their parent companies made, leaving MeTV no Hartford outlet until Weigel purchased what was the LPTV Jewelry TV affiliate.

If they opened up the Must Carry rights to LPTV and Class A stations, it wouldn't just be the stations you want to watch demanding carriage. It would be everyone who managed to get a license with lightbulb strength carrying nothing but pay to play religious/infomercial/shopping and no name diginets demanding carriage. Connecticut wouldn't be too bad since you only have several LPTV and Class A stations, but in major markets like NYC, LA and Philly that would be dozens of additional LPTV and Class A stations for each market that would need to be carried. Cable might be able to squeeze all of that in locally, but for satellite there simply is not enough bandwidth on the spotbeams if the thousands of licensed LPTV and Class A stations across the country could now demand must carry status. (i.e. DirecTV Hartford's locals are on a spotbeam shared with Albany's locals).

 

[terminal_man]

Quick update to say I'm now getting the Guide Info on WHCT. Thanks.

 

[terminal_man]

Quick update to say I'm now getting the Guide Info on WHCT. Thanks.

And of course now it's not working. Sheesh.

 

[WHNB]

Back on Tuesday I contacted MeTV, asking if their engineers could add the show titles and descriptions to channel 35's PSIP. My TIVO kept getting "Title Not Available" until a few minutes before 11 on Thursday night. At that time, the titles and program descriptions appeared in the guide, and they've been there ever since.

I'm impressed with how sharp the picture quality is on WHCT; the sub-channels look better than the distorted, stretched-out Antenna TV on WTIC. Weigel Broadcasting is a class act to show content that has been remastered from the original film prints. Reception glitches have been very rare and quick compared to the constant break-ups when the former owner operated the station and carried Jewelry TV.

TIVO shows WHCT's signal-to-noise ratio as 21 dB with 3151902 channel bits.

 

[terminal_man]

Did you contact them through the website?

It must be a glitch that only effects the old Zenith box I've got hooked up in another room. I thought PSIP was all standardized so there would be no issues across hardware. The guide from other channels is working fine so WHCT must be doing something different.

Back on Tuesday I contacted MeTV, asking if their engineers could add the show titles and descriptions to channel 35's PSIP. My TIVO kept getting "Title Not Available" until a few minutes before 11 on Thursday night. At that time, the titles and program descriptions appeared in the guide, and they've been there ever since.

I'm impressed with how sharp the picture quality is on WHCT; the sub-channels look better than the distorted, stretched-out Antenna TV on WTIC. Weigel Broadcasting is a class act to show content that has been remastered from the original film prints. Reception glitches have been very rare and quick compared to the constant break-ups when the former owner operated the station and carried Jewelry TV.

TIVO shows WHCT's signal-to-noise ratio as 21 dB with 3151902 channel bits.

 

[WHNB]

Did you contact them through the website?

Yes, I used the contact page on the MeTV website. I selected the "Captioning" option in the drop-down menu as the reason for contact so that the message would get to the engineers instead of the programming department.

Sorry that the problem hasn't been resolved for you.

 

[tvmicrowave]

Hey guys, apparently Titan, our PSIP data provider, dropped our data the first time this happened and we just discovered that they did it again.. Guide data should be restored shortly.

 

[terminal_man]

I was just about to post that the Guide info is working again. I reported the problem using the website and was thinking wow that was really quick. Oh well. Hopefully someone doesn't go wasting their time. Thanks tvmicrowave

Hey guys, apparently Titan, our PSIP data provider, dropped our data the first time this happened and we just discovered that they did it again.. Guide data should be restored shortly.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I am loving WHCT! The selection of channels is amazing! Loving the Me TV. Thanks!

 

[pauldow]

I am loving WHCT! The selection of channels is amazing! Loving the Me TV. Thanks!

I agree with the channel choices, but I with they would have a better selection of commercials. I usually mute or change channels when I see the lawsuits, Medicare supplements, Medicare plans, reverse mortgages (This isn't my first rodeo [WTH does that mean, anyway?]), anything with a Bell + Howell or Bulbhead branding, etc.

 

[mbu019]

Great selection of channels! I just noticed it this afternoon when I was flipping through the channels on the basement TV. Our prayers about METV have been answered. Decades and Movies! also look pretty good. I haven't checked out Start TV yet. This is the shot that Hartford OTA needed! Up here in Enfield it's a perfect signal and the quality is great.
I'm using an Antennasdirect XG-91 30 above ground on the roof with a Kitzamp KT-200 preamp feeding in both VHF and UHF. From 35's tower to my house is just a hair over 20 miles.

 

[terminal_man]

With Halloween around the corner it got me thinking of the horror movies I'd watch as kid in the 80's on WTXX-20. On weekends they'd have a block of movies called "Spine Tinglers" with a great intro that had clips from the original The Fly and Peeping Tom and others. I haven't been able to find it on YouTube. Does anyone out there have a copy they could share? I really wish I'd saved a lot of my recordings from that era. As a sidenote what do you think happened to the original station tapes from WTXX? Erased? Junked?

 

[roberthall560]

Maybe "Svengooli" on ME-TV at 8 pm Saturdays has those films now,they show a lot of the old horror movies like the ones you listed..
He may have a web page that has movies linked..